And a kind of review by Aric Vance, who was there that night ...
Cop Shoot Cop headlined.
There's an interesting story behind this. When I got to the club, I ran
into an old friend of mine who, as it turned out, was working as a label
representative for Polygram, and he invited me to his table to sit down with
three other people. He bought me a drink and asked me who I was there to
see. I told him that I had come straight from my work, and I just wanted to
see the God Machine and leave before Cop Shoot Cop came on. Suddenly,
everyone at the table looked at me. Frank (my friend who worked for
Polygram) stopped for a few seconds and said, "You're here to see the God
Machine ????" I nodded. He then pointed toward the two people sitting
at the other end of the table and mouthed the words "GOD MACHINE!!!" I
looked over, and a man with a huge smile on his face extended his hand
and said "Hi, I'm Robin!!" It was Robin, Ron, and their soundman (I
think his name was David...).
We all talked for about ten minutes about various things, where
they were from, where they've been and what not. Robin told me that I'd
probably want to come to the show the following night ; since his throat was
really sore and his voice wasn't that strong, he said that the band wasn't
going to do a long set. I jokingly responded, "Well, that's all right. As
long as you guys do 'Seven'". Robin paused for a few seconds, said, "I think
we could do that one," and looked over at Ron. Ron was a little hesitant at
first (his initial reaction was something like "But that's our whole
SET!!!"), but they agreed to do it.
The club was EMPTY when they started their set ; I counted twenty-five people in the whole place, including employees and band members. People started arriving about three-quarters of the way through "Dream Machine", which went into "She Said". After "The Blind Man", Robin apologized for his voice and thanked all thirty of us for showing up, sarcastically cautioning us against slam-dancing too hard. By the time they started "Seven", the dance floor was about half-full; once they got to the drone breakdown after the Chorus 2 part of the song (near the 7:00 mark on the album), the dance floor was full, and EVERYONE in the room had their eyes fixed on the band, awestruck. They extended the outtro for an additional four minutes or so, with Robin on his knees tiwddling knobs on his many effects pedals (I swear I counted something like fifteen of them!), slowly fading the song out, ending it with a sound wash fairly reminiscent of "Expressway To Your Skull" by Sonic Youth. Amazing, amazing stuff. The show only lasted for roughly 45 minutes, but it still rings in my ears as one of the best gigs I've ever been to in my life. I really had never seen a band unknown to most of the people in the club they were playing at just command everyone's attention like that. In a word, awesome!